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Steve McCurry attended Penn State University. He originally planned to study cinematography and filmmaking, but ended up getting a degree in theater arts and graduating in 1974. He became interested in photography when he started taking pictures for the Penn State newspaper The Daily Collegian.[1]

His career was launched when, disguised in native garb, he crossed the Pakistan border into rebel-controlled areas of Afghanistan just before the Soviet invasion. When he emerged, he had rolls of film sewn into his clothes. Those images, which were published around the world, were among the first to show the conflict. His coverage won the Robert Capa Gold Medal for Best Photographic Reporting from Abroad, an award dedicated to photographers exhibiting exceptional courage and enterprise.[2]

McCurry focuses on the human consequences of war, not only showing what war impresses on the landscape, but rather, on the human face. “Most of my images are grounded in people. I look for the unguarded moment, the essential soul peeking out, experience etched on a person’s face. I try to convey what it is like to be that person, a person caught in a broader landscape, that you could call the human condition.”[3]

Steve McCurry is portrayed in a TV documentary The Face of the Human Condition (2003) by French award-winning filmmaker Denis Delestrac.

In May 2012 Steve McCurry was Pirelli's inspired choice of photographer to shoot the pictures for the 2013 Pirelli Calendar in Rio de Janeiro.

McCurry took his most recognized portrait, "Afghan Girl", in a refugee camp near Peshawar, Pakistan.[4] The image itself was named as "the most recognized photograph" in the history of the National Geographic magazine and her face became famous as the cover photograph on the June 1985 issue. The photo has also been widely used on Amnesty International brochures, posters, and calendars. The identity of the "Afghan Girl" remained unknown for over 17 years until McCurry and a National Geographic team located the woman, Sharbat Gula, in 2002. McCurry said, “Her skin is weathered; there are wrinkles now, but she is as striking as she was all those years ago.”

Although McCurry shoots both in digital and film, his admitted preference is for transparency film. Eastman Kodak let him shoot the last ever produced roll of Kodachrome transparency film, which was processed in July 2010 by Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kansas and will be housed at the George Eastman House.[5] Most of the photos, excluding a few near-duplicates, have been published on the Internet by Vanity Fair.[6] "I shot it for 30 years and I have several hundred thousand pictures on Kodachrome in my archive. I'm trying to shoot 36 pictures that act as some kind of wrap up – to mark the passing of Kodachrome. It was a wonderful film."